Part of Wild Sky Media | Family & Parenting

Mom sews her daughter's mouth shut as punishment

Pennsylvania authorities have arrested a 46-year-old woman, Rana L. Cooper, on a laundry list of charges ranging from accusations of attempting to sew her 16-year-old adoptive daughter's mouth shut to forcing her to eat cat litter, and many other horrific acts. Cooper frequently threatened to cut off the girl's tongue and I'm sure she was capable of doing so, if the mood struck her.

Teenagers are trying. That's a fact. Between hormones, pushing boundaries and knowing everything, basically being 5' tall toddlers, I'm sure every parent has wanted to smack their teen right in the face at least once. The smart mouth repeatedly telling us how stupid we are and the eyes rolling every time we speak in their direction can cause us to consider the option but, obviously, we'd never do that but some parents will do even worse.

Cooper, a mother of seven children, has been under investigation for the past six months. Apparently the abuse started immediately after the child was adopted in 2008. Cooper's husband, the adoptive father, was allegedly aware of some of the abuse.

The teen told authorities that Cooper deprived her of food, water and even usage of the restroom until she earned enough "points" by cleaning the home leaving the girl to soil herself and go without water for several days.

Cooper only allowed the girl to eat after the rest of the family had eaten and on multiple occasions, Cooper allegedly force fed the girl, shoving food down her throat until it induced vomiting. Once, the girl says, her adopted mother forced her to eat cat litter. On another occasion, the girl states that Cooper forced her to "go into the bathroom and scrape her finger around the rim of the toilet and eat what was on her finger."

Those are just a few of the atrocities that Cooper inflicted upon her adopted daughter, she has apparently tried to drown her by holding her head under water, jammed Q-tips in her ears until they bled and even tried to gouge her eyes out.

Thankfully, the child has been removed from the home and no longer lives with the Cooper family. Rana Cooper has a preliminary hearing set for Nov. 6.

Let me just go on record as saying that this woman is evil if she did even a smidgen of what is being alleged and she should be locked up for the rest of her life. This wasn't just physical abuse, this was emotional abuse and worse still, it was sheer torture. She did everything but kill her and she nearly did that by witholding food and water.This was a child, not her indentured servant.

This "mother" adopted a child only to torture her in such horrific ways, that I can't imagine that this child will ever recover from this disturbing and unpredictable behavior. Her trust has been betrayed by the very people who were supposed to be protecting her.